


Realignments and Realisations

by Isaya



Series: Advent Calendar 2018 [12]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 05:13:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16968321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isaya/pseuds/Isaya
Summary: Thoughts on Palpatine, the situation and that they would have to face him at some point.





	Realignments and Realisations

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, this has been cooking pretty much since I wrote the first part.  
> First off, a couple of warnings:  
> \- This was mostly written on my phone so I apologize if the spelling and grammar are worse than normal  
> \- Vader is not exactly in a good head space. He's depressed and at points pretty flippant of slavery and his own death. Be careful if that's a trigger for you.  
> If there's anything else I should warn for but didn't, please tell me (I'm way too tired now to be posting anything now tbh so if I missed sth it wouldn't surprise me too much... not happy with the title either. oh, well)

He dreaded going back. He was damned glad that he was only Padawan at this time and there was no reason for him to come across _him_ any time soon. At least he'd have time to regroup, find his bearings and try to come up with an action plan.

He may be young now but he was under no illusion that he stood any chance against _him_ on his own even now. And not because he was unused to this body of his. No, he was under no illusion when it came to the power discrepancy between them.

If he thought there was any merit in it, he'd sent an armada of assassins and bounty hunters - he'd seriously thought about it - but there was little point. It would only tip _him_ off that someone was onto him... no need to complicate things unnecessarily. No, he would try to keep everything the same until he had an idea what to do.

So far, he'd been lucky. Qui-Gon had been busy enough with their mission to miss his first confused reaction to waking up here and by the time he noticed something was off, Ben, no, Obi-Wan (there was no reason yet to hide) had calmed and managed to wave his bemusement off as the result of a minor vision he couldn't interpret. He was aware that the ruse wouldn't hold up for too long but it bought him some much-needed time to find his equilibrium.

He was both looking forward to and dreading their return to the temple in a few days’ time. He couldn't imagine walking into an intact temple for all that he'd seen it destroyed only the once he could no longer remember it in all its glory. He only saw that recording of Anakin, the empty halls, the corpses...

He shuddered. _That had not yet come to pass_ , he reminded himself. They were still alive, all of them. Dooku hadn't even left the order yet.

_There was still time to make sure they stayed that way._

He would brave entering the temple when the time came. And then he would plot and train.

But for all his training, all his experience, he was scared shitless of returning to Coruscant. To step  foot on the same planet as _he._

He knew little of Palatine's powers to this day. He had managed to shield himself from the Jedi’s' gaze for so long and no one had every suspected anything, not until the very end. He feared what Palpatine could see. They never even came close to learning the true extent of his powers he didn't think.

He knew _he_ could shield and hide but how proficient was _he_ in seeing through others' shields? To see what they were hiding?

There was darkness in him now that he had not had before. It was faint but it was there. Qui-Gon if he felt it at all had accounted it to his vision - they left traces sometimes, for a short while.

But Obi-Wan knew better. He was afraid, so afraid in a way he had never been, not back then. He was far less naive and convinced of peoples inherent goodness - there were people like that out there still but he had also seen the other end of the spectrum, had become intimately acquainted with it... he would never be as light as he has been as a child.

He did not believe in the same things ... at least not in the same way.

And he was far more ready to do what was necessary. The war had taught him to survive, his exile how to stay alive.

And now he was running headfirst straight into the nexu's den.

XXX

The senate had always been full of pitfalls. Yoda had never liked having to go there (for as much as he allowed himself to dislike anything) but now he dreaded having to return. The Jedi were observers, seen as interlopers at worst, councilors at best. While the Council was in contact with the Supreme Chancellor at times they did not have a voice in the senate proper.

Looking back – and he had done a lot of that in the intervening years – he could see how the senate, the system was corroding even now. It was already bogged down in bureaucracy and he knew that it’d only grown worse in the past. 

But all that paled in the knowledge of _him_ already being part of the senate.

Yoda wasn’t sure if he (they) had enough influence to counter _his_. He would make sure they didn’t hand him the senate on a silver platter.

He dreaded having to go to the senate because he was not sure if he was ready to face _him_.

Releasing his emotions into the Force had been far more easy before the fall of the temple. Afterwards he had been numbed by the shock of all that death. Now however, knowing what was at stake? He was _afraid_.

_Fear leads to Anger_

_Anger leads to hate_

_Hate leads to suffering_

The mantra still echoed through his mind.

But then... Releasing (Ignoring) emotions hadn't exactly helped them much last time. It had lead them to ignoring the signs.

When had they stopped acknowledging (dealing with) emotion before releasing it? When had they started to blindly release them without considering their origins?

They relied so heavily on the Force that they'd stopped relying on their gut - not completely, especially not during the war but still...

So yes, for the first time in what felt like forever, at the thought of having to encounter _him_ Yoda was _scared stiff._

He would meditate and try to center himself. And then he would go visit with his friend. Maybe Mace could help him gain some perspective. Mace had had a closer brush with the Dark than most Jedi after all even if he was never truly tempted. Mace had always helped him look at something from a different angle.

When the time came to confront Palpatine he wanted Mace there – Mace had come the closest to defeating _him_ after all.

But first he would need to find proof of his machinations without tipping him off. If he could not convince Senator Amidala – Queen Amidala that is – not to call for a vote of no confidence to prevent _him_  becoming the Chancellor, he could discreetly send a Jedi (but not his former Padawan) to investigate his past? Disguising it as a mere background check, not something a Jedi would normally do but he supposed a Sith Lord equaled extenuating circumstances. Besides, he had seen how strict adherence to the code and an inability to adapt had ended before.

Maybe it was time to take a closer look at some of their traditions – after _he_ was dealt with (or at least after he had a concrete plan on how to deal with him).

Yes, he would meditate. He would center himself. He would speak to Mace. And then he would summon the Council to tell them what he could.

And he would avoid the Senate for now. Not for too long, avoidance was not prudent. Avoidance only gave more ammunition to fear. But he would wait for now. At least a bit. He needed to plot his way forward.

XXX

He had never appreciated how lucky they'd been with Watto as a child. Sure, he'd had the comparison of Gradulla but surely being free was _sooo much better, so desirable, so..._

Now, he knew freedom was a lie. Life always exchanged one Master for another. Gradulla, Watto, the Jedi (Qui-Gon although it hadn't occurred to him back then, the Council, Obi-Wan even), the war, _Palpatine._

At least the first two had the decency to call it what it was - _slavery._ The Jedi had called it freedom and the code and while the punishment had been far removed from what it had been on Tatooine, being a Jedi had been anything but being _free._

The conditions may have been better, but in exchange they dictated his thoughts, his emotions - the only things that were _yours_ as a slave. No one could take your thoughts away, your dreams, your emotions.

Sure, some Masters broke their slaves until they were mere husks of a being but as long as a slave did as told, no Master cared whether they liked or agreed with what they had to do. _But they never pretended it was anything but slavery_.

In a way the noose of the Jedi had felt far tighter. He had been free to do what he wanted - as long as they approved. He had been free to think and feel what he liked - as long as it complied with the code.

_Masters forbade slaves to marry._ And even if they did, it didn't save them from being sold separately. _Family_ was mostly an illusion. Not being a family per se but the concept of a family sticking together, more likely than not they'd be ripped apart, easier to control when they were isolated.

And then there was Sidious. He may have never called it such but as (former) slave Vader had recognized it as what it was. The only difference being that he was expected to attempt to kill his Master's life (and technically to succeed even, at some point).

Now he appreciated the simplicity of life on Tatooine. It rankled. But he appreciated it nonetheless.

Not that everything was simple, no. He both wanted to rip Watto apart for presuming ownership over _mom_ (less for himself) and at the same time he never wanted to kill anyone ever again. He constantly felt the urge to react with violence and he found he abhorred violence.

He fantasised killing so many different people in so many different ways... Watto in general, the vendor for overpriced food, slavers for how they treated their slaves... but he had done so much worse and thinking about it so removed from the situation made him sick.

At the same time, he felt numb. He'd been in immense pain and numb at the same time for so long, being _this_ (healthy) felt plain wrong, alien.

It was so bad he freaked out over the simplest things - when he after he first woke up, walked into the main room of their hovel it didn't compute. He'd walked there normally but as soon as he realized it he suddenly collapsed because he didn't know how to tell his legs to keep him upright anymore. He did it instinctively but as soon as something reminded him that _he was doing it_ he suddenly couldn’t anymore.

That was happening a lot. Walking, moving, eating, drinking, _breathing,_ that all turned from simple instinct to an utter impossibility at the drop of a hat.

His sudden clumsiness worried his mother and he absolutely did not know what to do with that. When was the last time someone had truly worried about him just because they cared? Apart from Luke and he wasn’t really counting Luke, his worrying about his father was all tied up in his efforts to end Sidious and the Empire.

He would have thought himself to be merely a tool for his rebel alliance son to kill his Master if he hadn’t felt how much Luke _cared_ and his conviction.

If it weren’t for his son, he’d have seriously considered just staying a slave; far away from all the things he could destroy one way or another. He was capable of so much damage; keeping him far removed from any power would be a way to contain what damage he could wreak on the galaxy.

But he couldn’t ignore what he knew about the past-future. Most of his crimes could be laid at Palpatine’s feet. He was a monster, no doubt, and he didn’t deserve to live, not really, but while he knew that he did what he did, he also knew that Palpatine would just find different ways to reach the same old goals.

The war would still be engineered, it’s beginning dated to before he’d ever left Tatooine at all. Palpatine would become Chancellor whether he was there for it or not. Order 66 would also happen he’d had no influence over that either – the Jedi would still die. Granted, he still maintained that the Jedi failed the Republic… but at the same time the system failed the order as well. He was ambivalent to the destruction of the order.

Maybe the death count would be lower but who knew? Even if no one racked up as high a kill count as he did during the fall of the republic… The emperor’s hands, while far less powerful than either him or _him,_ could do quite a lot of damage – and Palpatine had never truly felt bound to the Rule of Two. He may adhere to it nominally but he’d always dabbled in training others on the side.

All of that meant that he couldn’t stay on Tatooine. He could hide here surely but… in the end, his wife, his son, _his daughter_ … they all died for the republic or were prepared to.  One way or another, Sidious had taken everything away from him once before… and he would _pay_.

He wanted _vengeance._ And he would have it.

He just didn’t know how.

After all, who was he? And he didn’t mean that he still couldn’t really if he was Vader or Anakin, Jedi or Sith… He was a _child._ A child with no influence, no allies, no nothing.

Even if he wanted the Jedi’s help – and he decidedly did not, the less he’d have to deal with them the better – they’d never trust him. They hadn’t the first time, they had even less a reason to now.

Fighting Palpatine by himself was pointless. At the moment he was still too weak (too young) to fight him directly. He had no credits to pay any assassins or Bounty Hunters (admittedly he actually knew quite a few of those).

And he didn’t know if he could wait long enough to grow stronger.

That aside, there was no way  he’d be able to hide his feelings from his former master – even if this  Sidious had never had a bond with him, the man was far too cunning, too perceptive not to notice how he felt about him – _unadulterated hate_  was like a beacon to a Sith after all.

So he would have to lay low… but if he laid low, Master Jinn would not take notice of him and never win him in a bet … and the Jedi was his way off the planet.

But if Jinn took him, he could not avoid Palpatine…

If Jinn even tried to take him, after all, he was from the boy he had been – far, far darker. And he wasn’t sure if he could hide his darkness.

He didn’t want to hide his darkness. His Sith part wanted to revel in it, the part that was once Anakin feared it but it was so much a part of him, that even that part was so entangled in it that he didn’t know how to be without it enveloping him.

He was afraid of the darkness in him, afraid of what he was capable of, afraid of failing … Even if he failed, he would go down fighting. He didn’t think he would survive an attempt on Palpatine’s life but he was under no illusion that he’d be able to hold back… He would take him out or die trying, Maybe his death would make the Jedi think … yeah, no, he didn’t believe that either.

They’d already become complacent. They would doubt him ( _they had never trusted him_ ) but even before his becoming the Chancellor, the Jedi wouldn’t look deeply into an attempt on a senator.  Especially not the senator whose planet was in such dire straits. _Catastrophic Death Toll_ indeed. If only they knew.

And he had no way to proof that Palpatine was up to anything. The Jedi would reject anything out of hand and the courts were even worse.

No, he would have to face the nightmare himself.

He wasn’t even afraid, not of Palpatine. He was numb to fear when it came to him. He just _was_. He’d been so intimately familiar with fearing Sidious one way or another that at some point he had just _stopped_ and fear had turned into numbness and paralysis. Fear or not, nothing changed. Trying to go against him, to fight him or not, nothing changed. Sidious always won. There was no reason to fear a certainty. It just _was_.

Even now, he didn’t believe he had any real chance of changing anything but he would go and try anyway. He wasn’t afraid to march to his death. Death had lost all horror far too long ago for him to care now.

He would go and face Palpatine come what may.

**Author's Note:**

> Same drill, no editing, no beta-ing, only spell-check.  
> Well, a little editing I guess I got rid of the worst phone-induced typos but eh, it probably needs more.  
> (I actually plan on going over this after the whole calender thing's done with)
> 
> Vaderkin's part kinda exploded on me (it's about three times as long as the others' parts respectively)


End file.
